Monday, March 26, 2012

Living for the City

If there is a better, more thoughtful news aggregator than the Browser, please share it with me. I particularly like the 5 Books interviews, many of which have been the inspiration for my reading list over the last two years.

It might sound counterintuitive, but living in a city will make you richer, smarter, fitter, greener and more creative. We have to make sure that cities don’t just become vast swathes of anonymity – that as cities grow we can develop communities and a society that is stronger than the one that we have at the moment. We live in cities, but in our minds we live in Victorian cities.

I would add Richard Florida's, Edward Glaeser and Matt Yglesias' books to this list, and say that I'm not immediately inclined toward anything in the interview. Everybody cites Jane Jacobs, but she always strikes me as someone more interested in what she liked rather than the creative dynamism that produces overall gains, but at the expense of some. I don't want a high rise on my cul de sac, no matter how dramatic the improvements in public transportaion might be. Well, actually I do, if there's a market driven need, but you see my point.